THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE

by Mark Russell

  At first suspicious and then downright uncooperative, the police Lieutenant included Turner's statements in his hand-written preliminary report. The general would use the Baltimore Police report, along with the far-reaching powers of his office, to ensure state and federal authorities did their utmost in uncovering the chemists' whereabouts.

  Turner wound out the Scout's motor before aggressively changing into top gear. Drizzle turned into a shower and he switched on the wipers at their highest speed. He braked at an unsigned intersection, his hard face streaked by the rain-distorted light of passing traffic. He craved a cigarette, wanted to suck nicotine-laden smoke deep into his lungs. He pulled out in front of an oncoming pickup and put his foot to the floor. Rainwater sprayed from the back of his wheels as he pushed the Scout to well over the speed limit. But he soon got stuck behind a removals van and couldn't get around the bothersome vehicle due to a slow-moving car penning him in. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. 'Come on, come on, you sonofabitch,' he said through clenched teeth. The anger that had roiled inside him since Goldman's escape finally broke its banks. 'God damn him to hell!' He slammed his fist on top of the Scout's plastic dashboard, creating an unsightly web of hairline fractures.

  Goldman straightened his hair and clothes after speaking into the intercom. The glass door in front of him made a buzzing sound and opened. He took an elevator to the second floor. Before long he pressed the doorbell of apartment eighteen.

  Michelle appeared in the doorway.

  'Hi.'

  'Scott.' A nervous smile flitted across her face. She twirled the back of her hair. 'I expected you earlier.'

  She was everything his memory had painted, and more. 'Traffic,' he apologized.

  'Well ... come in.' She gestured inside and closed the door behind him. He looked about the apartment which was of a clean and gracious line and highlighted with modish fittings. He glanced at two Andy Warhol prints near the front door: Deborah Harry (1980) and Loti Smorgon (1979).

  'Er, Scott, this is Carmen.'

  He turned from the prints and was taken aback by Michelle's friend, her implausible beauty a signature of god's better work. Quite simply she was one of the most striking women he'd seen. Clothed in an over-sized jumper and red cotton tights, Carmen appraised Goldman as if he were a downtrodden creature from off the street. 'Scott.' She uttered his name as if performing a bothersome chore. After a cold smile, she returned to the kitchen, her standoffish air claiming the room.

  'Don't worry about her,' Michelle said. 'She's initially like that with strangers.'

  'Well, I'm glad I don't have to take it personally,' Goldman said with a sliver of sarcasm.

  An awkward smile crimped Michelle's face, all the while the room's subdued light highlighted the pale bruise about her eye. She gestured for Goldman to take a seat on a nearby sofa. Incredibly, she sat down beside him, only to look away and tap the sofa's armrest. A disquieting tension bridged the gap between them. Goldman sensed fatigue's legions skirting his perimeters, planning to invade at an inopportune time. All the while he couldn't think of a suitable conversation topic.

  He tensed when Carmen returned from the kitchen and dropped into a seat opposite. She crossed her legs with the elegant assurance of one not fazed by the critical lens of the public eye. A woman accustomed to pointing cameras and bright lights. From what Goldman knew she was a successful model. Accordingly he couldn't imagine her turning in a bad photograph. Like many men Goldman wasn't impartial to the glamorous model's movements. But he could tell from her cringing aspect that she didn't approve of him. He glanced down at himself and knew why. His soiled clothing, the fine sprays of blood (from the gunmen's injuries) on his shoes and jeans. God knew how dishevelled he actually looked. In the haste of his escape, he'd forgotten about his appearance. He knew it without a mirror: he looked like crap.

  'So, 'chelly says she met you yesterday afternoon.'

  Michelle nodded and continued picking at the sofa's armrest.

  'Yes, I, um, dropped Michelle off here yesterday evening.'

  'So where are you from?' Carmen asked suspiciously. 'What's your accent? New Zealand?'

  'No, Australia,' Michelle said.

  'Australia,' Carmen repeated, her deprecating tone suggesting it was hardly a better admission.

  Goldman wasn't insensitive to Carmen's manner or to the polish of her abode. He didn't belong here. But what to do? He had to concoct a fitting response to yet another awkward situation that he, in the course of this tumultuous night, had got into. He had to break the ice and elevate his status with these good-looking women, one of whom had already roused his finer side. He'd never been comfortable in the throes of a lie, but tonight he felt equipped for all kind of invention. Fortunately something came to mind.

  'Listen ... I really have to get this off my chest.' He took a crestfallen breath and looked at his two lovely companions. They were all ears. 'On my way here, after coming off 95, this gangling Red Setter leapt out in front of my car. Well, I was travelling pretty fast ...' He glanced at Michelle, as if keeping his appointment with her were the reason for such speed. 'Anyhow, I braked and swerved ...' He saw concern etch across Carmen's tan brow (was she naturally that colour? he wondered – she was nothing if not exotic). 'But you know how it is sometimes with split-second responses. The dog, realizing its mistake, paused, then continued ... alas, straight into my swerving car. I scraped against a stucco wall trying to miss the animal' – he waited, to affect the final touch – 'I stopped and had to pull the animal out from under the car. It was caught in the ... I won't go into it. The outcome was the poor creature died in my arms. I've still got its blood on me and the side of my car is terribly scraped ...'

  'Scott, it must have been awful,' Michelle said, 'to have gone through something like that.' She reached across and stroked his arm in commiseration. How he warmed to her touch, and how he recoiled from the boldfaced lies that had slipped from his tongue. His conscience stabbed at him and made him feel like a two-bit hustler stealing from her store of compassion. But he had no choice in the matter. He could hardly tell these women about the explosive violence he'd escaped from.

  Carmen's haughtiness fell away. 'Scott.' The name slipped more agreeably from her now. 'You can, um ... shower if you like.' She now sensed a decency in the fellow, if only by his ingenuous manner. 'It's the second door on the left.' She gestured toward the hallway, exposing long bronze fingers unencumbered by jewellry.

  Goldman was relieved to have bettered the hurdle, even at the expense of his conscience. Still, he felt Carmen's generosity had more to do with her not wanting someone with the smell of death on them being in her apartment.

  'Thanks. If you don't mind I just might take you up on the offer. Fortunately I have a change of clothes in the car from a squash game that got cancelled last night. Um, sorry to put you out like this.' And he meant it.

  'No, not at all,' Michelle and Carmen said, almost in unison. 'It's no problem,' Carmen finished. Goldman stood up and headed for the door. Michelle followed, looking genuinely pleased he'd come. 'Use the intercom to get back in. Apartment eighteen.'

  'Sure, I remember.' He stifled an urge to press against her. Their eyes locked for a lingering moment and Michelle closed the door after him. He stopped at the elevator, pressed the ground floor button, and waited. A beleaguered figure with slumped shoulders. The night was far from over and he would have to keep his wits about him until he found someplace safe to rest his head.

  Bands of interference flickered across the screen like on amateur home-video. A young girl groaned from the caresses of an unseen partner. A hand-held camera moved from her face and panned to her nether regions, her upper pubes dyed pink and shaved into the shape of a Valentine's heart. The young blond shrilled and cussed from a tattooed man bending her into different lovemaking positions. Shifting camera angles, though shot poorly, left little to the imagination. After a time the frolicsome girl begged her mate to end their bed-creaking romp. As if rouse
d by her throaty plea, the man succumbed to a powerful orgasm. The young blond struck a coy pose and looked longingly at the camera. The screen showed a yellow telephone number before flickering lines of interference signalled the end of the video.

  Peter Haslowski lay on a king-sized bed with a monogrammed hotel towel about his waist. He was fortyish with dark brown hair evenly grayed at the sides, which gave him a somewhat distinguished look; but here any likeness to a patrician bearing ended, for bushy eyebrows highlighted sharp, predatory eyes, and scars from knife and gun fights marked his well-defined torso. He was faintly aroused by Kurt and Rosie # 18, the x-rated video his girlfriend Candy had brought with her. It was one of many videos made by a Miami couple she knew and sometimes slept with.

  It wasn't as if Haslowski was in need of such entertainment. He'd made love to Candy an hour before. The twenty-three year old, now idling in the suite's marble Jacuzzi, had proved more than his match in bed. Her hips invariably heaved with the determination of contest. Haslowski was considered a hard man by his underworld associates. He had street cred and worked out in his private gymnasium. Still such credentials and maintenance had proved little match against Candy's implacable cravings.

  Haslowski met his spirited bedmate when he and a business associate bought a chain of sex shops in Miami. She was a peepshow performer in one establishment, and from simmering eye contact, had worked her way into his bed and cocaine stash. After a month of her sexual savagery, he was close to admitting defeat. Of course he didn't want it known that a breezy young blond with silicon implants and a small red devil tattooed on her ass had almost broken his mettle. Strangely enough, he wasn't without feelings for her; and instead of turfing her back to the rat hole she'd come from, he'd arranged a lavish poolside party at his Florida Keys home.

  The upcoming event would be a showy spectacle of food, alcohol, drugs and gamesome young women. Haslowski had invited not only friends and associates but several porn brokers scouting for up and coming talent. One of Haslowski's underworld associates had bought an adult films production company, then another. From it, he had several influential contacts in the adult entertainment industry. Haslowski hoped that the extravagant poolside party (to be filmed by Go Hard Productions) would relinquish him of the wiry Texan blond whose libidinal drive would be the stuff of legend once captured on film.

  'Peter-pet,' Candy called enticingly from the bathroom, her long southern drawl invading the suite's silence. 'Come and join me in the tub. You know how I love doing it in water.'

  So much for a relaxing stretch in the Jacuzzi.

  'I really need you, my Polish lion!' Her voice croaky with cocaine.

  Though Kurt and Rosie # 18 had briefly roused him, Haslowski was unmoved by her invitation. 'Fuck the stupid bitch,' he cursed with characteristic brevity. The suite's bedside phone rang. He checked his Rolex and picked up the receiver.

  'Hello,' he said with little civility.

  'Peter.'

  He genuinely faltered. 'Roderick, what a surprise.'

  'Sorry to call so late. I, ah, called earlier, but reception couldn't put me through to your room.'

  'No, I had a business meeting.' Before the meeting, Haslowski had unplugged his suite's telephone from the remote chance it might have a power-fed transmitter hidden inside the handset. The meeting was with an underworld associate who'd given him information about Representative Michael Eastman. The Congressman was collecting material for a Congressional inquiry into the activities of Transworld Investments, a large merchant bank with business ties to the powerful drug cartel Haslowski planned to retire from. Eastman's inexpert investigators were still a far cry from the illegal pulse of Transworld Investments, and most likely would never uncover it, as the corporate labyrinth in place was exhaustively linked by offshore accounts.

  Still the possibility of a probe had made certain people nervous. Haslowski had been given the address and phone number of Congressman Eastman's love nest across the Potomac. Apparently the Congressman had a penchant for extramarital passion, most particularly for rompish Asian women. He was known by a close few to have grappled with several call girls at a time in his Crystal City apartment. Haslowski was told to stake out the apartment in prelude to bugging it. He knew an ex-FBI technician who'd install a state-of-the-art audio-visual surveillance system. Of course, for a princely sum of cash. Still Haslowski was confident if push came to shove Representative Eastman would play ball once shown crisp imagery of his extramarital activities.

  'You sound a bit edgy, Roderick. I thought we'd agreed on tomorrow night?'

  'Something, ah, unexpected has come up,' Haslow said. 'Could I by chance see you tonight?'

  'Tonight? Sure, sure,' the older brother said, his curiosity aroused. 'I've been cooped here up all day. So let's meet at – '

  'Peter-pet!' Candy cried agonizingly from the bathroom. 'Will you get your pimply ass in here before I go down and nab that cute young bellboy in the foyer.'

  'Hang on, babe,' he bellowed back. He removed his hand from the mouthpiece. 'Okay, we'll meet at Purple Haze. It's a new club near Ninth and D. I'll see you there in about ... two hours.'

  'Yeah, sure. Thanks,' Haslow said nervously. 'I'll be near the door.'

  'Good idea. It's been that long I think I've forgotten what you look like. Nah, only kidding. Okay, Purple Haze then.' He replaced the handset and meditated on the brother he barely knew – though not for long, because his radar detected no threat on that front.

  'Peter, please!' Candy's throaty drawl bounced off the walls. Haslowski sighed, checked his platinum watch, and swung off the bed. The closing scenes of Kurt and Rosie #18 played in his mind. Surprisingly he was in the mood. And why not, he thought, this wild Texan rose will soon be moving on ...

  Goldman had showered and changed clothes, looking more presentable in fresh jeans and a blue and green argyle sweater. He leaned back in an antique chamber seat and tapped its armrests, studying the women on the plush sofa opposite. It seemed in the time he'd showered a dispute of sorts had developed.

  'Yes, Carmen, he's got it at my place ... but you can't be serious? You want to drive to the Capitol tonight?'

  'No, just joking, babe.' The American-Salvadorian model took a long sip of drink, her tan fingers indenting the red and white can.

  'Carmen, you've developed a strong dependency in past weeks. Partying too hard on one thing, and you know darn well you have.' Michelle looked with parental concern at her fidgety companion. Carmen rolled her eyes and curled her lip like a petulant child.

  'Honestly, Carmen, you're just like Terence.'

  'Don't 'chelly ... don't ever compare me to that all-out loser.'

  'An all-out loser you seemed to have kept company with before you went on holiday. Largely behind my back, I found out.'

  'It was purely business, babe ... and bad business at that. If he hadn't cut his product I wouldn't have used as much.'

  'Carmen,' Michelle said, sounding like a seasoned NA sponsor who's heard every excuse under the sun, and then some, 'Terence was just like you. Successful at what he did, and with an enviable income to prove it, but he kept using and his value perceptions gradually eroded until – '

  'Stop,' Carmen blurted. 'I only just said it and I'll only say it again. Don't ever compare me to Terence. I can pull the bucks, sweetheart, a lot of them in case you haven't noticed, whereas Terence can only squander what's left of your savings.' She swallowed more cola and shook her head. 'He ruined your career, 'chelly. You were acquiring a name, a trademark look. Paris and Milan were opening up to claim you as one of the fortunates. Everything was in place ... but now you're just like him, washed up like some woebegone song. Jeez, what happened, babe? It's so sad. It really is.'

  'Look at you,' Michelle shot back, 'you're too far gone to know how close you are to the edge. You're about to sail over it, sweetheart, and if you keep up your present rate of consumption you'll soon lose your mega-dollar looks. In fact, as I said last night, it's already happening.' />
  'Fuck you!' Carmen's fiery expression gave hint of her afflicted system, of how badly it needed to be replenished by the proper agent.

  'Hey, calm down,' Goldman said to both women, but to no avail.

  'Just face it,' Michelle sneered. 'You're hanging for it like never before.'

  'Oh please, spare me,' Carmen said sharply. Then with coy confidence: 'I'm still wired from my time on Mustique with Dominique and the Roses ...'

  The Salvadorian model spun toward Goldman. She acknowledged him with an inimical charge that until now she'd only exercised on Michelle. 'So, 'chelly says you brought something for us.'

  Here we go, Goldman thought. Now it's my turn. He guessed Carmen didn't like him witnessing her row with Michelle; and she probably didn't like his attempt at arbitration, either.

  'Leave him out of this,' Michelle said evenly.

  'Well, have you?' Once again Carmen stared at Goldman as if he were a stray who'd had the fortune to enter her exclusive abode.

  Phew, this chick is totally nuts. In any case, while grabbing clothes and toiletries from his car for a much-needed shower, Goldman had had the foresight to grab some MPA.

  'Sure Carmen,' he said, reaching into his jeans pocket. 'I've got a little something here for you.'

  Instinct counselled neutrality, that he tread lightly. Heaven knew he'd been through enough drama for one night. He tossed a small Ziploc bag of MPA onto the coffee table, then sat back and massaged his swollen knuckles. Carmen snatched up the bag and held it to the light with the nervy expectation the powder inside might prove to be pure Bolivian flake.

  'So,' she said with the authoritative air of a householder put out by an uninvited guest, 'this is the same stuff as yesterday?'

  'Carmen, you're acting a total ass,' Michelle hissed.